The cloud is changing the face of enterprise IT and the world is really starting to take note. Enterprise cloud companies are the subject of countless front-and-center conversations at industry events (Todd, our CEO, will be speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt on an “enterprise revolution” panel on Tuesday). Across the board – from CRM and email to HR and (of course) identity – enterprise cloud vendors are supplanting expensive, brittle and limited legacy on-premises software solutions.

Today we’re announcing the results of a partnership with Workday, which will replace one of the most costly and inefficient – yet common – integrations for enterprises today.

Large enterprises have spent years — and millions of dollars — integrating their on-premises HR solutions with their on-premises identity management software. And the results have been less than satisfactory. For mid-sized businesses, deploying and integrating these complex on premises systems has been cost prohibitive. They have had to live with less functionality, reduced security and error-prone, manual processes to integrate IT systems and secure employee access to applications. For both large and mid-sized businesses, the swift move toward cloud adoption has only complicated the matter.

We’ve partnered with Workday and, together, are leveraging the power of the cloud to deliver increased functionality at dramatically lower costs for large enterprises – while also making it possible for mid-sized businesses everywhere to gain access to integrated, enterprise-level HR and identity management functionality. Exciting, indeed.

Workday-Driven Identity Management via Okta

The first deliverable of our partnership is a pre-integrated Identity Lifecycle Management Solution that allows companies to use Workday as their master source of employee data and drive all access to core IT systems – like Active Directory and other cloud applications – via Okta. A new employee can be hired in Workday and then seamlessly set up with the access they need to key IT systems to get their job done. And when they are terminated, access to IT systems will be automatically deprovisioned.

Employees will have immediate access to the apps they need, creating a great experience and increasing productivity, but access to IT systems is also secured when employees leave. Whether used by enterprises or mid-sized businesses, the end result is improved productivity, lower costs and greater security. Joint customers are really excited about this solution, as are we. As James Vander Heyden of Brady Corporation told us:

“As we’ve begun to adopt more cloud applications, identity has become a key piece of our IT infrastructure. The Workday and Okta integration will give us a secure, reliable and cost-effective solution to manage identity and employee provisioning seamlessly through Workday. Plus, through Okta, employees will have immediate access to the apps they need to get work done – not only creating a great experience, but increasing productivity at the same time.”

Our partnership with Workday is another example of how integration between enterprise cloud players is transforming the services that power big businesses in a way that’s beneficial to IT, HR and employees alike. There’s an enterprise revolution happening as companies like Okta and Workday lead the way toward meeting new demands and solving longstanding issues.

To find out more on the partnership, check out: http://www.okta.com/what-we-do/workday-integration.html.